Scott Sessions served as mayor from 2013-2017. Thomas McKenna | Collegian
Scott Sessions stepped away from city politics in 2017 after four years as mayor of Hillsdale. Now, he’s running for mayor again after the “political nightmare” and “toxic work environment” that he said some councilmembers, including his opponent, have created for city staff.
“I want to try and stop the negative culture that is inside the Hillsdale City Council,” said Sessions, 67, who has worked as purchasing manager at Hillsdale Hospital for nearly 20 years. “That is the reason why I’m running for mayor.”
Five city officials have resigned since March, including the city’s engineer, zoning administrator, airport manager, and two public utilities supervisors. Sessions blames Mayor Pro Tem Joshua Paladino and Ward 2 Councilman Matthew Bentley, his opponent in the Nov. 4 mayor’s race.
Whoever wins this election will serve a year-long term and could choose to run in the August primary and November general election in 2026 to serve another four years.
Sitting in an armchair at the Mitchell Research Center earlier this week, Sessions leafed through a set of papers and pulled out an August Collegian article that quotes Bentley, who said he’s pursuing “accountability” for city staff.
“What I see is that by making them accountable, it’s contributing to the negative culture,” Sessions said. “Because, to me, they’re bypassing the city manager, and they’re going right to the staff.”
If Sessions were elected mayor, he said he would institute a chain of command. All correspondence between council and staff should go through the mayor and the city manager, Sessions said.
“Right now it’s a free-for-all with the mayor pro tem and a couple of new members of the Hillsdale City Council,” Sessions said.
He said the council and staff “worked together very well” and “got a lot of things accomplished” when Sessions served as mayor from 2013 to 2017. When he first ran for mayor, Sessions focused on “fixing the crumbling infrastructure of Hillsdale,” The Collegian reported in 2017.
Scott became the second Sessions to hold the mayor’s gavel. His son, Michael, had won the mayor’s race in 2005. The Hillsdale High School senior, at only 18 years old, became the youngest serving mayor in the country through a write-in campaign.
“I had to play catch-up, and he helped me,” Sessions told The Collegian in 2013.
Sessions will play less catch-up this time around if elected. During the interview, he pulled out highlighted notes to explain bits of city policy and tried to set the record straight where he feels his opponents have been unfair.
Bentley, his opponent, told The Collegian he entered the mayor’s race to stop the “road diet,” which would slim down Broad Street to one lane in each direction, add bike lanes on both sides, create more parking lots, and make other changes to traffic patterns downtown.
Sessions also initially opposed the project for “safety reasons.” But after the council approved the plan last month, Sessions said it is better — for financial reasons — to continue the project. Broad Street and Carleton Road, he said, are due for about $250,000 in repairs over the next two years. But adding the repairs to the road diet project would bring the city’s expense down to $135,000.
According to Sessions, the road diet’s bike lanes qualify the city for a state grant. That funding would cover about half of the road diet’s $868,000 in total costs, bringing the city’s liability down to $395,000. In addition, the local investment board will pay $250,000, and the Hillsdale Renaissance project will cover $10,000.
“It’s about fiscal responsibility now,” Sessions said. “Instead of paying $250,000 for infrastructure, we, the city, will be at a cost of $135,000. So actually, the city is saving $115,000.”
Trying to stop the road diet would be even more costly, Sessions said.
“If they still try to fight it,” he said, referring to Bentley, “you’re still gonna pay the $250,000. Plus, you’ve got engineering costs on top of that.”
The city funds road repairs on deteriorating neighborhood streets by designating special assessment districts. SADs require individual property owners in a district to pay up to $5,000 to pay for repairs on their street.
Sessions said he would keep using SADs because the city still lacks the money to maintain streets without them.
“We still need them, because we still have to fix the streets,” he said. “And the money surplus isn’t there.”
Sessions said he would be open to exploring alternative methods of funding special assessments. But ending the use of SADs now would also be unfair to property owners who have already paid the fee for roadwork on their streets, he said.
“I do believe it’s discrimination if you go back now and change things,” Sessions said. “But at least you could form a committee to look at it.”
On homelessness, Sessions said he wants to prevent a return to the prior presence of the homeless in public areas.
“I just don’t want to see the homeless go back out on the streets,” Sessions said. “Because that was the problem. I don’t want to see them on the trails.”
The city council voted last week to remove a tent structure for the homeless at Camp Hope, leaving the future of the shelter uncertain. The tent, city officials said, does not meet city building code.
“That’s a tough one to me,” Sessions said. “They’re following the laws, which has to be done.”
Sessions said he would restart the Homelessness Task Force created in March 2020, which has been discontinued.
“Just looking at it and maybe coming up with ideas to help the situation, getting everybody together and trying to get some common ground, having everybody talk about it — that’s what I’d like to see happen,” Sessions said.
